The New York Times, which suffered through its own fake news scandal in the Jayson Blair case, thought it had caught the Bush administration in similar practices in a March 12 front-page story on the use of video news releases, or VNRs, by the federal government. It was headlined, "The Message Machine: How the Government Makes News; Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged News." Over 6,000 words were devoted to the matter.
It was an issue tailor-made for Senator Hillary Clinton and other Democrats, who had previously issued a statement declaring that the Bush administration's use of VNRs constituted illegal "covert propaganda." Clinton had declared, "It is critical to the credibility of an independent news media that covert government propaganda be rejected for use by news organizations." But it turns out that the Clinton administration had produced them as well.
The Clinton administration produced the same unlabeled prepackaged news segments, under the same department, on the same topic (prescription drug benefit), using the same "tactics" that the Bush administration was lambasted for. The Democrats had done the very same thing.
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2 comments:
Liz, you must agree that this increase in propaganda is a problem that we need to be concerned with aside from stupid partisanship. Where did it start? Who cares. It has increased. It did not increase because Republicans are more evil, but because they are the ones in power during the trend.
The real point is that this use of propaganda should be stopped.
Just let blatant propaganda go on? I think you say that because of the color of the administration. I don't think you could take a non-partisan stance if your life depended on it. We on the left will always be crazy and the right will always be, well, right. I am just so feed up with people and petty refusal to see things without partisan right or left blinders and this blog is no different from all of the rest.
This is my last post.
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